Sunday, 26 July 2009

Downtime Thoughts Part 2: Nailing the Basics

Each player who has the Asset Benefice gets their asset transformed into the capital of their own province (note that if you buy a small asset, your Province may not be very impressive).

The capital Asset has three basic stats: Piety, Trade, Court. The first three represent the influence of each faction (Church, Guilds and Nobles, in that order).

All Assets (including the Province's capital) also have Attack and Defence scores. These can be upgraded by buying add-ons to each asset - for example, a guard wall would provide a defence bonus to the Asset.

The Piety, Trade and Court stats represent each faction's influence in the area generally. They also have a direct value in that each has a special rule. For example, Trade generates additional income, while Piety can be used when losing battles to keep up morale and Court can provide law enforcement against illegal contracts signed in their area. (These special rules may change when I think of something better). Other characters can attack these stats, allowing them to move them up or down if they win.

The asset's controller is in charge for as long as they keep their faction's stat higher than the others; if the other faction stats are risen higher than the controller's stat, the other faction has more influence, they may barter it in game or simply attempt a coup.

Players can also use actions to attack others' non-capital Assets. If they win, they bring the Asset into their Province and gain its effects.

As well as buying troops, technology and structures to add to their Assets, there are a number of NPC Muster merc and unaligned pirate groups hanging round. Merc contracts are open for bidding every downtime, with the highest bidder gaining the mercs for that period (or one action, I haven't decided yet).

2 comments:

Intriguing ideas so far, I can't wait to see what it looks like once it all comes together.

So, starting out it looks like each player who buys into the downtime game with the Asset Benefice gets a Province's capital. I might be missing something, but it looks like the only important stat for the capitals is the attack score since players can only use actions to attack other's non-capital assets.

Then, in between game days - the players start out using their capital's attack stat to try and take control of GM controlled assets. Successful attacks appears to award Piety, Trade and Court stats. Once they gain control of those other provinces, then they may attempt a coup.

At this point, assuming the coup is successful, the player becomes the controller of that asset. Is the idea for the coup to occur in play at the game day? Does their asset benefice increase to reflect a successful coup? Once s/he controls that asset, can they then add that province's attack score to their own capital's attack score in order to gain more territory? In the same way, does winning the highest bid on mercs give you their attack score to add to your own for the purpose of attacking another province?